1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an object recognition apparatus and an object recognition method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Image processing methods for automatically detecting a particular object pattern from an image have been known. Such image processing methods are very useful and can be utilized for determination of human faces, for example. The methods can be used in many fields, such as teleconferencing, man-machine interfaces, security, monitor systems for tracking human faces, and image compression.
A recently disclosed technique for detecting faces from an image utilizes several noticeable features (such as two eyes, a mouth and a nose), unique geometric position relationships among these features, symmetrical features of human faces, and complexional features of human faces. For example, see Yang et al, “Detecting Faces in Images: A Survey”, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PATTERN ANALYSIS AND MACHINE INTELLIGENCE, VOL. 24, NO. 1, JANUARY 2002.
However, with the technique described in the above document, recognizing faces in an image involves computation processing uniformly for the above features. Therefore, it may take long to recognize faces.